another name.”
Konrad sniffed. “Father doesn’t think so.”
“Right now,” said Elizabeth, “I am extremely grateful to be alive. And I think we should put the whole matter in God’s hands.”
Konrad gave a little nod.
“Has she converted you, then?” I asked. “You never believed in God.”
“She is very persuasive,” Konrad said, smiling, and Elizabeth flushed as they looked at each other fondly.
“And he’s converted you, too,” I said to her, disguising my jealous pain with anger. “You were so brave on our adventures, and now you cowardly want to surrender.”
She would not meet my eye. “We see things differently, Victor.”
“Well,” I said, “I prefer to take some action. But if you wish to lie about and hope for miracles, go ahead.”
“Victor, you have already risked your life for me,” said Konrad kindly. “I cannot imagine a greater show of brotherly love. I’ll never forget this. But I am asking you now to stop.”
“But-,” I began, only to have him interrupt me.
“Surely my say should count the more,” he said. “It’s my life. And I say stop. Truly, let’s leave this behind us.”
I did not know how to reply.
I woke the following morning to an unexpected feeling of well-being.
When I parted the curtains, warm sunlight doused me. I opened the window to the trill of birdsong and an intoxicatingly warm breeze. The lake sparkled. It seemed the whole world was before me, and it was truly beautiful, and beckoning me to return to it. I was alive.
I took a deep breath. These past weeks, during Konrad’s illness, my mind-awake and dreaming-had been filled with dread and cobwebs and darkness. I wanted the sun to burn them all away.
And I could not but wonder…
Maybe Konrad and Elizabeth were right, and it was best to abandon our dangerous and uncertain quest.
As far as prisons went, the chateau was a pleasant and roomy one, but it was still a prison. The lake and meadows we’d taken for granted all our lives now seemed to beckon from the windows and balconies with excruciating intensity.
Father was not a sadistic jailer. Though he refused to shorten our sentence (despite my best arguments), over the next five days he did try to distract us with entertaining stories about far-flung countries, and the bloody histories of famous battles that he knew Konrad and I had always craved when younger. He shared with us the news he received from abroad, where France heaved with revolution. A whole new world was being forged beyond the mountains, but within the walls of Chateau Frankenstein, nothing changed.
He’d done something to the library’s secret door so it would not open. Clearly he no longer trusted our promises.
Mother was very happy. She thought Konrad healed, and she had all her children under her roof day and night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A few nights later I woke from a dream so terrible that it shimmered darkly before me, even as I sat up in bed, panting.
Konrad was dead and laid out in his coffin, the hue of bodily corruption already on his flesh. I stood at his head, peering down at him. Behind me I could hear the weeping of my family. A huge fury stirred inside me.
And suddenly the coffin was no longer a coffin but a laboratory table.
Over Konrad’s body I spoke words of power, and applied unguents and strange machines to his limbs, his chest, his skull.
And then I gave a great cry, and energy erupted from within me and arced like lightning from my body to his.
His hand twitched. His head stirred. His eyes opened and looked at me.
I lit a candle and paced my room. Sleep was impossible after such a vision. What was its meaning? I did not believe in augury, but the dream’s urgency was hard to ignore. Would Konrad sicken and die unless
… unless we took action once more? Was it within my power to save him?
Restlessly I went to my desk and from a hidden cupboard drew out Eisenstein’s slim green volume. Father thought all alchemy nonsense, yet at least some of it worked. It had given me the vision of the wolf, and a flameless fire to escape the depths. It had helped Polidori resurrect text from a burned tome, and make Krake preternaturally intelligent.
Why couldn’t this same well of knowledge produce an elixir of life?
Idly I paged through the book, looking at the headings. They did not seem so unlike the natural sciences Father taught us at our lessons I stopped.
Upon the page was written “Transmutation of base metals to gold.” It was not the luster of this promise that caught my attention, but the handwriting in the book’s margins. It was distinctive and unmistakable-for it was my father’s.
I gripped the book closer, my eyes flying over my father’s calculations, his detailed annotations on performing the procedure.
Liar.
The man I had admired all my life, whose every word I had trusted, was a liar. The secret he kept from Mother was one thing-a small deceit done to protect her from worry. But this was altogether different. He had barred us from the Dark Library, told us that alchemy was nothing but nonsense. And all the time he himself knew its power.
He had turned lead into gold!
So why had he forbidden us from making the Elixir of Life even though it might one day save the life of his own son? I didn’t understand.
I forced myself to take a breath, and as my pulse slowed, I knew my course of action. I wouldn’t allow myself to be distracted any longer.
Just one ingredient left.
Just one more, and the elixir would be mine.
After breakfast I went downstairs to the servants’ quarters and found Maria in her office, going through the accounts.
“How are you today, Victor?” she asked, looking up.
“I am thoroughly enjoying my imprisonment, thank you, Maria.”
The news of our adventuring was common knowledge among the servants, although Father had been most careful not to make any mention of alchemy. Even among the most loyal of staff, rumors could easily escape the chateau and sully our family’s glorious reputation.
“Can I be of some service to you?” Maria asked-a touch warily, I thought.
“Today is your day in town, is it not?” She usually made the trip into Geneva with a maid to supervise the purchase of provisions we could not get locally in Bellerive.
“It is indeed.”
“Would you be willing to take a message for me?”
“Of course. To Henry Clerval, I assume.”
I closed the office door behind me. “No,” I said. “To Julius Polidori.”
She was silent for a moment. “You found him, then,” she said, for she and I hadn’t spoken of the matter since she’d given me his name many weeks before.
